by Fred Stenson
In a second letter, to a British officer in Africa, Butler had described Jefferson as someone who would make a good scout. To this one, he’d said that Jefferson’s uncle was a mighty warrior. The recipient of this letter worked for the biggest chief of all in Britain’s African army, the one called Roberts. This Roberts had his own scouts, and, with luck, the two letters together would result in Jefferson’s joining those scouts. He would then be in front of the big British army rather than behind or inside it. This might be more dangerous at times, but there would be less likelihood of his getting a disease or being shot by one of his own.
When Butler’s words started to flatter again, Red Crow signalled Roux to stop and begin reading the second one: the letter from Jefferson.
Jefferson’s letter was not as long as Butler’s, for which Red Crow was sorry. There were so many things he must have seen and done by now that Red Crow would have liked to hear about, but his nephew did not seem to find them interesting. He had ridden the train east, the one Red Crow had also travelled on one time. Jefferson and the other new soldiers had stopped in Regina to learn things that would make them soldiers. Jefferson found these things useless and was glad Red Crow had already trained him as a warrior.
The boat ride to Africa had been long, hot, and very hard on horses. When they got to Africa, they stayed in a place beneath a mountain called Table because it had a flat top. It was like Chief Mountain, but broader. They left the coast and went inland by train and saw that the country was huge but poor. A horse could grow tired walking from one blade of grass to the next. There were many hills made of broken orange rocks. In this dry place, the water gave everyone the shits. There was a much worse sickness that killed soldiers with fever.
Jefferson said he had some friends. Frank Adams, the son of Jim Adams and his Halfbreed wife from the Cochrane Ranch, was one. A second was a French cowboy from Pincher Creek. His name was Ovide Smith and he worked for Jughandle Smith, the whisky trader turned rancher, but the two were not related. There was a third friend called Casey Callaghan who drove bull teams to and from Fort Walsh.
Jefferson told Red Crow about African animals. There were many kinds and sizes of antelope. Their horns were sometimes very large and unusually shaped. There was a buffalo too, but the black people preferred to eat the biggest antelope, which was the size of a cow and tasty. There were animals in Africa similar to a cougar. A black one was called a leopard. One even bigger was called a lion. Jefferson hoped to see a lion and was told he might, farther north.
As for the fighting, it was of a kind Red Crow would not have liked. From huge guns, both sides shot bullets big as a bannock loaf. Even when the gun was too far away to see, its bullet could still land on you. You did not see the men you were fighting most of the time. The enemy wore beards and dressed like farmers. They travelled in carts and wagons like Halfbreeds.
There were more black people in this country than white. There were brown people but no Indians. The black people were made to work for the whites and were treated poorly, as bad or worse than white people treated Indians.
Jefferson was embarrassed to say he had not yet been in a single battle when he wrote the letter. The army had given him a good rifle but with the wrong back sight. He had the correct sight now and could hit things in practice. He was hoping to kill his first Boer soon.
Then came the part that surprised Red Crow most. Jefferson wrote that he loved Bitter Water’s daughter, Ran After, and hoped to make her his wife after the war.
Roux finished reading and Red Crow placed a coin on the table and told him to go. All that day until the sun went down, Red Crow stayed seated in the stuffy room and thought about his nephew.
A month ago, Red Crow had met Bitter Water at the Blood Agency, and Bitter Water had told Red Crow that some in his family had died of the blood-spitting sickness. More had the disease and were going to die. One of those was his daughter, Ran After.
As he had done every time Roux came to read him these letters, Red Crow argued with himself about his obligations. Must he tell his nephew about the girl? Would Jefferson throw his life away if he did? After a long time wrestling with it, Red Crow decided there was an important difference between telling Jefferson that the girl was sick and waiting until she died and telling him that. By splitting these two ideas, Red Crow could make a choice. He chose the path that allowed him to wait.
Kroonstad
When the war got to Kroonstad, it stalled, just as it had at Bloemfontein. The Boers had been expected to fight for the town because they had made it their Orange River capital after Bloom fell. But they did not fight for it. They continued falling back, all the way to the Vaal River: the border between the two rebel republics.
Roberts and Kitchener might have wanted to give chase but could no longer ignore their starving army and horses. They had to stop the advance to get their supply system running again; to build bridges that trains could cross. But, when they stopped at Kroonstad, a familiar camp follower caught up with them. Just as at Bloemfontein, enteric fever gathered on the morning dew and leapt into the bodies of the unsuspecting.
Many rumours went around the stalled camp, and the most prevalent said Herchmer was returning and there was a plan among the officers to get rid of him. There was also talk of a flying column that would leave Kroonstad and strike north, to surprise some rebels who had snuck back to their farms to rest.
On the third day, Frank woke to the sound of Ovide groaning. What ailed him looked more like dysentery than enteric fever, but that might only have been a wish on Frank’s part. In the Karoo, he and Ovide had both had dysentery and survived. He spent the day boiling water, cooling it; urging Ovide to drink.
Between times, when water was heating, or when Ovide was staggering back and forth to the latrine, Frank brushed Dunny, and pulled her mane and tail. He trimmed her forelock so it fell between her ears and sat prettily above her arrow-shaped blaze. Ovide watched from his blankets and knew what it was about. If keeping the horses shabby was a defence against being selected for special duties, grooming the dun cayuse clearly meant the opposite.
Reasons why a man would want out of this camp were plentiful. Every day, the stretchers came in empty and walked out loaded. The sick tents were full and performing their function of hurrying sick men to their fate. Frank was not sick at present and might avoid becoming so by leaving with Hutton’s flying column.
But that was not why. Besides being dangerous, Kroonstad was tedious. Frank kept remembering how Jeff Davis had ridden off into the dark. It made him want to leave too.
In the end, Hutton did get permission for his flying column, and Frank was selected: one of fifty Mounted Rifles to go with fifty Dragoons, and a hundred and fifty other kinds of soldiers and some guns. Ovide did not even roll over for the moment of farewell.
Cantering out of town, Frank felt himself rise. Sniper bullets sang above last year’s cornstalks, but neither the bullets nor Ovide’s green face could drag him down today.
The column rode for several hours, then rested until dark; then rode all night and part of the next day. They kept travelling until tall trees announced a cluster of farms. Bothaville.
They split into gangs, circled and hit the farms as suddenly and simultaneously as possible. Burst through doors with Colts wagging. Shouted at terrified women and children. Stabbed bayonets into clothes closets. Threw up trap doors and shone lamps into cellars.
A couple of Boer rebels were found at table, eating their wives’ pastries; another in his sitting room, smoking his pipe and reading the Bible to his children. More rebels had seen it coming in time to be in the hayloft, and one sad case they wished they had not found had squeezed himself down the hole of his outhouse.
They commandeered wagons and filled them with oat bags and mealies, sunflower seeds, root vegetables, rings of sausage. Trussed chickens and turkeys. They laid claim to enough trek oxen to haul it all. Gathered a serviceable herd of horses.
They found weapons too. Lev
er-action Martini-Henrys and bolt-action Mausers. Boxes of ammunition. Finding rebel guns on a farm turned it into a rebel farm. You could loot or burn a rebel farm to your heart’s content.
They did not want to be ambushed at Bothaville, so they left quickly. They did not sleep, except in the saddle, all the way home.
Frank discovered that rolling into their Kroonstad camp after the Bothaville raid was a big event for the soldiers who had not gone. They lined the camp’s centre road and cheered them because they had done something. Wagons piled with booty, a herd of horses, twenty-four shuffling prisoners—those were the proof.
Frank thought of the Blood Indians riding into Crow country and coming back with scalps and horses, that this must have been how they felt—and why they went again and again, despite the wounds and the dying.
On the ground, Frank jumped and kicked until his legs would work, then hobbled to where their camp had been. Ovide had used his Wallace spade to scrape to dry ground, but he was gone and so was his greatcoat and bedroll. What remained was their oil sheet, crumpled and held down by the spade. Frank asked everyone he saw until finally one told him that Ovide was in the sick tent. Enteric fever. Quarantined.
A barbwire fence around the tent marked the quarantine line. Between that and the tent door was the cart they used to carry the dead. Frank leaned on the fence and called out. He knew they were short of nurses and doctors, but he went on calling anyway. He shouted Ovide’s name. He called for help, as though he himself were sick.
Near the end of an hour, an angry nurse stepped out. She was square built and strong, maybe five years older than Frank. She had a cloth mask over her mouth and nose that had a spatter of blood across it. Her eyes were dark-rimmed. He told her he wanted to give a message to Ovide Smith, then realized he had no message.
“Just tell him Franks back.”
“That’s so important you yelled at me for an hour? Do you have any idea what it’s like in here? How many nurses do you think there are?”
“Five?”
“There’s me.”
Frank apologized. “But would you?”
She stormed back inside, and, after a very long time, came partway out. She lifted the cloth from her face. Her lips were beautiful.
“He says don’t let his horse drink the dew. Now get away and stay away.”
In the hole Ovide had scraped, Frank tried to sleep. The night was no colder than recent ones, but fatigue cranked him with chills and chattered his teeth. Pictures of the day flickered through his mind erratically, as if the light machine throwing them was faulty. Then one picture surprised him. He was riding into camp again, down the line of soldiers. Near the end, one of those soldiers was Colonel Herchmer.
Frank worked to see more. Herchmer was saluting the flying column. He stood straight and jutted his porcupine jaw. His greatcoat hung on him the way old coats hang on scarecrows. His cheeks burned red in a grey face. He looked like what he was: an old man who’d been sick and had rushed his recovery.
There was something else in the picture—or not in it. Herchmer was alone, except for one flunky. In all of Franks other memories, right back to Ft. Calgary, the colonel had been surrounded by anxious officers, trying to decipher and do his bidding. Now, all but the single flunky had abandoned the wreck.
Then sleep came at Frank like an avalanche of snow.
By the time Frank awoke, the big African sun was burning a hole in an umber sky. While Frank scrounged feed and water for the horses (including a new gelding that was his share of the Bothaville loot), he kept his ears open. The talk today was mostly about the plot. The Mounted Rifles officers had gone against Herchmer.
Through morning, the story developed. Now it was a petition taken over Herchmer’s head. Different versions had different complaints against him. It was on account of Herchmer’s harshness. It was because of his age. It was his health. He’s had a stroke, you know.
One story said there was no relationship between the plot and things done or not done here in Africa. The officers were settling old scores from Canada. Mounties overlooked for promotion. Contracts given out by Herchmer to his friends and family, and not to them.
Frank was still very tired and fell asleep in the afternoon by the horse lines. Fred Morden woke him, lightly kicking his boot. Fred told him that there was a meeting tonight, of D Squadron, a secret meeting after lights out. It would be held right here beside their horses.
Frank went to the sick tent but had no luck. No matter how much he called, the nurse would not come. Then Ovide himself came out. He exited the tent and crawled through the wire; caught his baggy trousers on the barbs and cursed. He looked like death but said he was better.
“Nurse put the glass thing in my mouth. No fever.” It was dysentery after all, and he said that part was drying up.
Frank told him about Herchmer and the meeting, but Ovide was on his way to his horse.
That night, Frank kept himself awake. A while after the bugle sounded lights out, Fred Morden came, and they walked together in silence. Shapes converged on the horse lines, and up close Frank saw men wrapped in their blankets, looking like Indians on ration day. Everyone sat, but the meeting was slow to begin.
Frank knew why. When they’d had their secret meeting in the Great Karoo, there had been a clear problem (hunger) and a clear solution (sheep). But today the stories had gone off in all directions. Believing there would be disagreement on the facts, no one wanted to go first.
Fred Morden raised his hand and waved a piece of paper. When everyone was looking, he said, “This is a copy of what the officers gave General Hutton. It’s a list of points against Colonel Herchmer.”
Fred asked Tom Miles to strike a match so he could read. Tom carefully shielded the flame. Fred read, and when the match went out, he waited for Tom to light another.
Herchmer was unfit. That was the substance of the first part. It gave three pieces of evidence: staggering; cursing wildly; and forgetting what he was about to say. Frank had to admit the authors of this thing had been clever. Instead of saying there’d been a stroke or that the colonel was a lunatic, or was too old, they’d stuck to symptoms. Saying he staggered and forgot things was more diplomatic than saying he was sixty—considering that General Roberts was sixty-eight.
The letter’s second part described what the men in Herchmer’s command thought of him. It said Herchmer was extremely unpopular with them, so much so that they might mutiny and kill him.
That was the extent of it. Tom’s match went out, and they sat in the dark. One way or another, every man present was insulted.
“I don’t know about you boys,” Fred Morden said, finally, “but there’s at least three officers I’d kill before Herchmer.”
This prompted a laugh. It loosened them up and now several wanted to talk.
“I heard that coward we had the song about is a ringleader,” said one.
Morden had seen the names. He said it was true.
“Old Herchmer knows horses,” said a cowboy. “We were taking better care of our horses before he got sick.”
Frank thought of Herchmer shooting the pale horses and trying to get The Blue and Dunny, but didn’t raise that point.
“Ever been chewed out by him, though?” said a Mountie. “He’ll curse you, then your mother, then your family to the third generation of ancestors. He’s hard to work for.”
It sawed back and forth.
When the meeting finally broke up, Frank thought he felt a helplessness in the men drifting away. They had spoken their piece, but they knew that’s where it stopped. Herchmer’s fate was likely already sealed, and not by them.
Next morning, the bugler blew a long reveille. The sergeants and the NCOs told them to pack and get their horses ready to march. Though there was a sense of hurry, it also sounded like they weren’t leaving until evening. A night march, for some stupid reason.
Frank and Ovide took their time. Ovide was examining the new horse: feeling along the animal’s legs, touch
ing a host of places only he knew and checking what difference it made in the gelding’s eye.
Frank kept watch on the officers’ tent and their mess. For a time, it was all orderlies hurrying about or standing by someone’s tent waiting for an answer. Late in the morning, a slicked-up group of officers—that included the coward—headed for the British side of camp.
After the officers returned, Frank fixed his attention on Herchmer’s tent. A sergeant brought him a message in the early afternoon. Herchmer and his flunky came out soon after. Herchmer’s hat was brushed. His boots were newly blacked. He tucked his swagger stick under his arm, and he and the flunky marched.
After Ovide had finished examining the gelding, he turned to his Basuto and found she had a slight limp. While he’d been in the sick tent, the farrier had put on a new shoe. He’d placed one nail too high and hurt her. Ovide was angry, and he kept squinting at Frank. If Frank hadn’t been away playing soldier, it would not have happened, was what the look said.
Finally, Frank was sick of it. Here they were in a whole camp buzzing with talk about their deposed commander, and he was stuck with the only person who did not care. He got up, brushed himself off, and left.
He wanted to find Fred Morden. When he did, Fred was sitting alone by the horse lines with his haversack, bedroll, and saddle beside him. He was ready to ride.
Morden was drinking cold tea out of his mess tin. Frank sat down beside him.
“So how do they get rid of a colonel?” Frank asked.
“Tell him he’s not fit and offer him something he doesn’t want.”
“Like what?”